The item is CZ2600012, Ordinance No. 348.5056. Staff’s Form 11 framed Sept. 1 as introduction and public hearing. The recommended motion was to introduce the ordinance, waive further reading, and adopt it on successive weeks. The minutes for that meeting have not been published. The ordinance’s signature and adoption-date lines in the packet are blank. This newspaper does not treat the ordinance as adopted.

Staff wrote that the amendment would reorganize Article XIXj of Ordinance 348, update ADU and JADU rules, and add SB 9 units “consistent with State law through January 1, 2026.” The county claims a CEQA exemption.

As drafted, the ordinance would apply to all unincorporated Riverside County. Housing types listed in Article XIXj would include ADUs, JADUs, SB 9 units, second units, guest quarters, ranchets, and multiple-owner group units.

The Form 11 says the ADU maximum size would go to 1,600 square feet, from 1,000. Attached ADUs would be limited to 50 percent of the primary dwelling or 1,600 square feet, whichever is less, but the 50 percent cap would not preclude at least 1,000 square feet. A detached ADU on a single-family lot could be 1,600 square feet.

On a lot with an existing multifamily dwelling, the draft would allow up to eight detached ADUs, not more than the number of existing units.

Owner occupancy would not be required. The draft text says property owners “shall not be required to occupy, or reside within, either the primary dwelling or ADU located on the same lot.”

The draft would legalize some unpermitted ADUs and JADUs built before Jan. 1, 2020, under Government Code section 66311.7. Manufactured homes could count as ADUs. A JADU would be limited to 500 square feet, entirely within a single-family dwelling.

SB 9 units would implement Government Code sections 65852.21 and 66411.7. Twelve zones are listed as single-family residential for SB 9 purposes: A-1 (2.5 acres or less), R-1, R-1A, R-A, R-D, R-R, R-T, R-T-R, R-T-R-1, SP, W-2, and W-2-M. The packet says inclusion of a zone does not by itself establish eligibility. Urban lot splits would be handled separately in Ordinance 460.

Second units would remain separate from ADUs. On lots of 20,001 square feet to 2 acres, the second-unit maximum would rise from 1,200 to 1,600 square feet. Guest quarters would remain accessory, not independent dwellings. Ranchet and multiple-owner group rules would remain limited to the Eastern Coachella Valley.

A new section would let the planning director, or a designee, elevate a Director’s Hearing item to the Planning Commission if there are significant policy questions, public controversy, or substantial community impacts.

If later adopted, the ordinance would take effect 30 days after adoption, according to the draft.

The Planning Commission recommended the amendment 4-0 on July 8, 2026, according to the Form 11 background. That is not a Board of Supervisors vote.

The next listed Board meeting is Tuesday, Sept. 15, 9:30 a.m., 4080 Lemon St., Riverside. When checked on Sept. 2, that agenda page did not list Ordinance 348.5056. No second-reading date is printed in the Sept. 1 packet.

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The agreements, reached in both cities within roughly a year of the fires, mark a reversal for local officials who had moved to block a state housing law from applying in fire-ravaged neighborhoods. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass had signed executive orders last summer allowing cities and counties to suspend the law, known as Senate Bill 9, in areas classified as “very high” fire hazard zones within the Eaton and Palisades burn areas.

SB 9, passed by state lawmakers in 2021, allows homeowners to split single-family lots and construct duplexes on each half, effectively opening the door to as many as four housing units where zoning once permitted just one home.

The pro-development legal group YIMBY Law challenged the executive orders in court, naming the governor, the mayor, and four local jurisdictions that had opted to block the law. The organization argued that none of them had the legal authority to override legislation approved by the state.

Under the newly finalized settlements, both Malibu and Pasadena agreed to rescind their local ordinances blocking duplex development and to process all SB 9 applications, including those already filed. Pasadena’s City Council approved the change unanimously on July 20. Malibu has until Sept. 29 to formally repeal its restriction.

“For people who are living, or hoping to live, or hoping to move back to Malibu and Pasadena, SB 9 is back,” said Sonja Trauss, executive director of YIMBY Law.

The settlements arrive amid ongoing tension between fire survivors and housing advocates over how devastated neighborhoods should be rebuilt. Many residents who lost homes in the Eaton and Palisades fires have opposed denser rebuilding, citing worries over evacuation routes, traffic congestion and changes to the character of their communities. Among the most outspoken opponents was reality TV personality Spencer Pratt, who leaned into public frustration over the state and local wildfire response during an unsuccessful bid for Los Angeles mayor.

Supporters of the law counter that it gives fire victims greater financial flexibility to rebuild at a time when construction costs are soaring and insurance payouts have often fallen short or been delayed.

The vast majority of the more than 16,000 structures lost in the two fires were located in the city of Los Angeles and in unincorporated Altadena, meaning the settlements with Malibu and Pasadena affect a smaller share of fire-damaged properties. Still, Trauss said the outcome sends an important signal about the strength of the law.

“The writing is on the wall,” she said. “It’s a good signal when parties are settling because it indicates the respondents’ feelings about how defendable their side is.”

The legal fight is far from over. Los Angeles County, the city of Los Angeles, Newsom and Bass remain defendants in the ongoing lawsuit.

At the same time, state lawmakers are weighing a related measure. State Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, a Democrat representing Altadena, introduced legislation this summer that would temporarily exempt the unincorporated community from SB 9 and another housing law, reflecting the continued debate over how best to balance rebuilding needs with local concerns in fire-affected areas.

Original source: CalMatters

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Another was designed to turn under-used church parking lots into fonts of new affordable housing.

A third would, according to supporters and opponents alike, “end single-family zoning as we know it.”

Fast-forward to 2025 and this spate of recent California laws, and others like it intended to supercharge the construction of desperately needed housing, have had “limited to no impact on the state’s housing supply.”

That damning conclusion comes from a surprising source: A new report by YIMBY Law, a pro-development nonprofit that would very much like to see these laws work. 

The analysis, released today, studied five state laws passed since 2021 that have swept away regulatory barriers to building apartment buildings and other dense residential developments in places where such housing has been historically barred. 

The laws under review include:

• SB 9 from 2021, which allows people to split their single-family homes into duplexes, thus ending single-family-home-only zoning across California. In practice, according to the report, building permits for only 140 units were issued under the law in 2023.  
• AB 2011 from 2022 was designed to make it easier for developers to convert office parks, strip malls and parking lots into apartment buildings. In 2023, developers on just two projects were given local regulatory approval to start work under the law. In 2024, the total was eight. The report found no projects that have made use of SB 6, a similar bill passed that same year but with stricter labor requirements.
• SB 4 from 2024, the so-called Yes In God’s Backyard law, which lets churches, other houses of worship and some schools to repurpose their land for affordable housing. The report found no takers on that bill too.

“It’s grim,” said Sonja Trauss, executive director of YIMBY Law. Though she acknowledged some of the laws are still new, she blamed their early ineffectiveness on the legislative process which saddled these bills with unworkable requirements and glaring loopholes. 

“Everybody wants a piece,” she said. “The pieces taken out during the process wind up derailing the initial concept.”

What are these requirements and loopholes that have prevented these laws from succeeding? Maybe not surprisingly, they are the frequent objects of critique by YIMBY Law and the Yes In My Backyard movement more generally. 

One is the inclusion of requirements that developers only hire union-affiliated workers or pay their workers higher wages. 

Another are affordability mandates which force developers to sell or rent the units they build at below-market prices.

A third is the strenuous opposition by local governments and the failure of these state laws to override it. In the two years following the passage of SB 9, for example, YIMBY Law tracked 140 local ordinances that, in the view of the report, were “designed to reduce or prevent” the bill from working on the ground. They included tight limits on the size of buildings, affordability requirements, or restrictions on which types of owners can make use of the law. 

Last year, the state Legislature passed a “clean up” bill meant to void some of these local add-ons.

There are plenty of other possible impediments to construction in California, which may explain why these bills have seen such tepid uptake. Sky high interest rates, chronic shortages of construction workers and high material costs (all of which could be exacerbated by current or expected changes to federal tariff, immigration and fiscal policy) all work to make residential housing development a less appealing financial proposition. Insufficient public funds and expected cuts to federal housing programs may weigh down on the affordable housing sector too.

But the report is not the first to point to the preconditions and omissions included in so many of the state’s legislative efforts to goose housing development as the reason for their lack of impact.

In a recent law paper, UC Davis law professor Chris Elmendorf and UC Santa Barbara political scientist Clayton Nall wrote that the relative success of California’s efforts to boost the construction of accessory dwelling units is the exception that proves the rule. Over the last decade, a cavalcade of state laws have stripped local governments of their ability to subject backyard cottage projects with environmental review mandates, significant fees, affordability mandates, union-hire rules, confining size or aesthetic limitations or added parking requirements. 

“The ADU boom stands alone. No other form of housing production took off in California during this period,” the authors wrote. A likely reason why, they argue, is that ADU projects don’t come with nearly as many strings attached as other forms of dense development permitted by various California laws.

In 2023, the state permitted more than 28,000 ADUs, according to state data.

The history of ADU legislation in California is instructive, said Trauss. “It took about like five years of revisions before they were really getting going.”

The YIMBY Law report is based on self-reported permitting data submitted by cities and counties to the California Housing and Community Development department. The nonprofit complemented that messy database with its own internal collection harvested from its own litigation and activism. That means the data on what is actually getting built — and therefore how effective any of these laws really are — is imperfect. 

That fact isn’t lost on many legislators. 

The Assembly housing committee’s first hearing of the year was dedicated not to new legislation, but to evaluating the state’s existing “pro-production” laws.

“We shouldn’t just keep passing more and more bills just because we can,” Chair Matt Haney, a San Francisco Democrat, said. “We should actually look at what is working, why it’s working, how we can do more of what’s working and if it’s not working, we should do more to fix it or change it.”

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